Last week, The National Journal broke the story, since confirmed by other sources, that the Obama administration plans to cut billions of dollars from the LIHEAP program that subsidizes energy costs for the needy (italics mine):
President Obama's proposed 2012 budget will cut several billion dollars from the government's energy assistance fund for poor people, officials briefed on the subject told National Journal....
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion. The proposed cut will not touch the program's emergency reserve fund, about $590 million, which can be used during particularly harsh cold snaps or extended heat spells, three officials told National Journal.
In 2010, Obama signed into law an omnibus budget resolution that released a total of about $5 billion in LIHEAP grants for 2011. Pointing to the increasing number of Americans who made use of the grants last year, advocates say that LIHEAP is already underfunded. The American Gas Association predicts that 3 million Americans eligible for the program won't be able to receive it unless LIHEAP funding stays at its current level....
Still, despite the uncertainties surrounding the proposed cut, it is dramatic. LIHEAP has been semi-sacred for most Democrats and many Republicans -- a program that carries an emotional resonance as it was designed to keep poor people, particularly older poor people, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. "A lot of people in the Northeast are going to be unhappy," an administration official briefed on the budget said.
I do not understand this. Once again, the Obama administration deliberately attacks a group that supported him: poor, elderly Northeasterners. Admittedly, it's no different than every other effort by Obama to fuck over his own base, but still, I don't get it.
Hell, even John Kerry and Chuck Schumer realize this is a bad idea. On the policy side, this is stupid: the issue isn't just when the weather is unusually bad (there are laws to prevent energy shutoffs in most states). Exceptionally bad weather only means that the poor are screwed even more than usual. They need this assistance during mild winters too. Because they're poor.
Finally, there's the ethical dimension. No one forced this on Obama. It's not like the Republicans proposed this, and he thought he had to make a deal. Screwing over the elderly poor, that's all him. No one forced him to do it--it wasn't even on the table.
It's disgusting, and immoral, and all the worse because it's in service to the awful ideology of deficit reductionism. As Mark Thoma puts it:
There are ways for the administration to show it is "serious" about deficit reduction besides going after the poor with cuts that are a drop in the bucket relative to the size of the deficit problem. I'd be much more impressed for example if the administration demonstrated its seriousness by going after powerful vested interests rather than those least able to defend themselves within the political arena.
But that would require political courage, something Obama has never shown in great quantities, except when punching Dirty Hippies in the Face. Asking those who have nothing left to give to engage in 'shared sacrifice' is cruel and disgusting.
This is change we must oppose.
An aside: Thoma also knocks down the 'subsidy for energy companies' argument:
As for the "subsidy to energy companies" argument, pretty much any spending on the poor can be recast as a "subsidy" to someone. For example, giving people food to prevent starvation is nothing more than backdoor support for those greedy farmers who already get enough help from the government.
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What we've seen over the last 10 years is the largest mandated transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest. Tax cuts for the rich = loss of money for the poor. For a democrat to continue that legacy would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
If it's illegal to actually cut off somebody's heat, what is the government's incentive to pay for it? It seems like it could have a very negative consequence of energy companies ruining already poor people's credit history, and make it harder to get out of poverty, but will people actually be freezing to death or having heart attacks in summer because of this?
At the end of the SOTU address, I fully expected Obama to pull a Mission Impossible and tear off his mask, revealing that he is really Ronald Reagan.
Where's Hugo Chavez when you need him?
becca: "will people actually be freezing to death or having heart attacks in summer because of this?"
Yes. The only question is how many.
Here in Texas, you have to vote in the republican prmary to make any difference at all, so I do. The downside (actually one of many downsides including self loathing, reflexively gagging, and utter despair) is that various republican organizations think I am actually a republican. They used to send me surveys and solicitations in the mail talking about how "Obama is pure evil, bent on destroying the country, fascist and communist at the same time, and by the way this has nothing to do with the the fact that he is a black foreigner. Please send us money. Did we mention that he is black? And probably a foreigner? But definitely black." OK, that's not a direct quote, but it is pretty damned close.
I no longer get those surveys or solicitations, probably because the republicans realize that Obama is much more effective than they could ever be in achieving their goal of destroying the country. Their work is done.
When Obama brought up "Hope" during his campaign, I didn't think he meant he would kill it...
It recently occurred to me that "Hope" and "Change" were total newspeak. Strange that it took so long, really.